Things Are Happening – December 30, 2016

We’re exactly seven days away from the beginning of the NCAA season, meaning that in one week’s time I will have to remember how to live blog things again. Those muscles are really atrophied. I’ll be back doing the normal daily live blogs each weekend of the season, and I’m going to add a running results page for meet week with all the final scores in one place so there’s not so much clicking back and forth and hither and thither and yon.

The first weekend is pretty solid this year, with the very first day giving us Oklahoma/Alabama and Georgia/LSU. Some years, the first day is just like the North Miami School of Chinese Medicine vs. a ditch. So this is better. The full season schedule is here.

The team previews are almost done. 17 down, 4 to go. And then we get to stop previewing things and start reviewing things, stop being optimistic about people’s potential and start being pessimistic about their actual, horrible actions. The whole gaggle of previews is available in the drop-down menu.

Training videos have tapered off with the Christmas break and the season coming so soon, though UCLA did want us to remember Macy Toronjo and that she’s a person who is doing an acro series on beam.

B. Voronin Cup

Russia hasn’t stopped competing for a single second since the end of the Olympics (why are the gymnasts always injured???), but in the shock of all shocks, no one forced Seda Tutkhalyan to pour herself into the Voronin Cup last week and slop around the beam for a second. Instead, the competition acted as an opportunity for Daria Elizarova to pop out of a jack-in-the-box and go, “SURPRISE! Remember this piece?”

Obviously, she’s never going to hit another routine as long as she lives (we’ve met Russia before), but she won the Voronin Cup and good for her. Polina Fedorova finished second with Lilia Akhaimova in third. Gymnasts wearing big-girl pants didn’t attend this meet, but how many of them are actually healthy and still competing right now anyway? One and a half?

Sadly for Elizarova, her thunder was stolen by Elena Eremina, who accrued 10 bonus points in her junior-with-promise duel against Ilyankova by performing a Nabieva + Pak combination.

It’s not bad. The G-valued Nabieva is worth two tenths more than the piked version, so if she continues performing it at about this level, it might actually be close to worth it. The bigger concern may be her commitment to taking after Nabieva in other areas as well, like leg form.

The remaining significant news coming out of the meet concerns Anastasia Sidorova and the fact that she is from Georgia, starting recently. Well, she wasn’t making any teams when she was Russian, so…

Why didn’t Elizarova continue competing for Uzbekistan? Does she think she is going to compete for Russia at Worlds/Olympics in the future? I suppose if it worked for Kramarenko in 2014, it could work out for Elizarova in 2018.

So there are four more team previews coming… obviously Alabama and Florida. Who else? Arizona State is the only Pac-12 team not done, while there’s plenty of B1G teams, most likely to do are Penn State, Iowa, Michigan State. Unless BBS does Bowling Green…

You’re right. I must’ve been so impressed with the OU and Cal freshman previews I was including them in the full team previews. 🙂 Also, it makes sense not to do any more B1G previews (no offence to those teams) or to do ASU because obviously it’ll probably be another 0-8 in Pac-12 season (though I do expect more 195s and less disasters).

That particular routine was actually quite watered-down compared to what Jo showed throughout her career at Ark. She regularly competed a 2/1 turn and did a LOSO onto the end of the beam for one season. She also did a Deltchev on bars and did full-in and front 2/1 twist on FX. Truly one of the coolest gymnasts ever.